Infant mortality and maternal education around the world

The Health Metrics site linked below has this excellent graphic showing the relationship between mothers education and infant mortality around the world and how it changes over time.

NBER Paper: Traffic Congestion and Infant Health

Traffic Congestion and Infant Health: Evidence from E-ZPass

Janet Currie, Reed Walker
NBER Working Paper No. 15413*
Issued in October 2009

This paper provides evidence of the significant negative health externalities of traffic congestion. We exploit the introduction of electronic toll collection, or E-ZPass, which greatly reduced traffic congestion and emissions from motor vehicles in the vicinity of highway toll plazas. Specifically, we compare infants born to mothers living near toll plazas to infants born to mothers living near busy roadways but away from toll plazas with the idea that mothers living away from toll plazas did not experience significant reductions in local traffic congestion. We also examine differences in the health of infants born to the same mother, but who differ in terms of whether or not they were “exposed” to E-ZPass. We find that reductions in traffic congestion generated by E-ZPass reduced the incidence of prematurity and low birth weight among mothers within 2km of a toll plaza by 10.8% and 11.8% respectively. Estimates from mother fixed effects models are very similar. There were no immediate changes in the characteristics of mothers or in housing prices in the vicinity of toll plazas that could explain these changes, and the results are robust to many changes in specification. The results suggest that traffic congestion is a significant contributor to poor health in affected infants. Estimates of the costs of traffic congestion should account for these important health externalities.

Baby schema activates appetitive reward network in childless women

The study showing infantile features to promote brain areas that may motivate caregiving is detailed here.

Toxic Waste and Infant Health

Janet Currie and Johannes F. Schmieder have a new NBER working paper: "Fetal Exposure to Toxic Releases and Infant Health" (abstract below). Professor Currie will be visiting Geary in the new year; details below.

NBER Abstract:

Every year, millions of pounds of toxic chemicals thought to be linked to developmental problems in fetuses and young children are released into the air. In this paper we estimate the effect of these releases on the health of newborns. Using data from the Toxic Release Inventory Program and Vital Statistics Natality and Mortality files, we find significant negative effects of prenatal exposure to toxicants on gestation and birth weight. We also find that several developmental chemicals increase the probability of infant death. The effect is quite sizeable: the reported reductions in cadmium, toluene, and epichlorohydrin releases during the 90s could account for about 3.9 percent of the overall decrease in infant mortality. Our results are robust to several specification checks, such as comparing developmental to non-developmental chemicals, and fugitive air releases to stack air releases.

Geary Seminar: February 21st 2009, Janet Currie, (Columbia University). "Childhood Health Inequalities".